loosening your grip:
Improvising with Language and Movement Language
by Peter Trotman

If indeed we were being watched by interstellar beings, their study of our ability to communicate would reveal a surprising fact. All humans speak the same language. The variations, as seen through those dark, bug-like eyes that miss nothing, would be as minor to them as the colour variations found amongst petunias. They are still the same flower with the same structure and function. Universally humans use the same six speech organs, we all use the same areas of the brain for constructing language, and we all share the same grammatical system that enables us to build an infinite number of possible sentences based on a finite collection of building blocks. We share the same pattern recognition system that enables us to distinguish phonemes and words.
While other species may have trunks or sonar detection or the ability to generate electricity, our specialisation is language.
As a species we have also developed a predilection for storytelling and dance which are found universally across all cultures.

While dance communicates in many ways, it is not language. Language requires grammar, a lexicon of discrete elements that are syntactically combined, and makes use of Wernicke's & Broca's areas of the brain. Sign language is not an exception. It too meets all these criteria but it is not dance.

Problems
Language and dance are two different expressive modes that many of us are interested in integrating into our performance practice. This integration has been favoured in the last few years as has the integration of dance with text, film, multimedia, cyberspace etc. The 'Problem with Language' that so many of us feel is that as dancers we are habituated to one mode of expression. The world of language to us seems vast and insecure. Words seem to draw us away from our ability to focus on movement and sensation. Words are downright terrifying in their significance. They are inconvenient and awkward.

The obverse 'Problem with Movement' exists for those intoxicated by the power of language. Words have the ability to absorb our attention making us forgetful of our bodies, our sensations and for some of us our contact with reality.
For those of us adept at both modes, it can feel very difficult to shift from one to the other.

The Unity of Language and Movement
Describing ourselves as "Improvisers" is helpful because it gives us greater permission than terms like "actor" or "dancer". The attitude that it easy to embrace both language and movement, to experience them as being of the same cloth is very useful. Think of the amphibious creature that effortlessly moves from the medium of water to that of land and air. In the same way, we need to learn how to effortlessly slip from one medium to another. This involves a loosening of our grip and dependence on both.

What do language and movement have in common?
To start with, the act of speaking is a corporeal experience. It involves extensive use and coordination of lungs, tongue, lips, larynx, facial muscles, palate, jaw, eyes, and gestures.
As an exercise, increasing the passion and energy with which we speak greatly amplifies this natural bodily support for speech production. The more emphatic we become the less we can help butmove and become totally physically involved. A lot of the time we suppress this degree of involvement and physical excitement. The voice is rooted in our physical and mental processes. This embodiment of our voice is one of the fundamental crossover regions between the two modes.
Another unifying process is our imagination. We can learn to readily respond to an image with either movement or words and in this way the image unites either kind of impulse.
We can also imagine how our words may be connected to our bodies, e.g. imagining that our breath is coming all the way from our feet.
A third approach is to look at the two modes and see how each might be made more like the other. Can movement be stretched to be more like language? Can language be stretched to be more like movement? By focussing on how to broaden the domain of each into the other's territory, it gets easier to shift from one to the other.

Language-like Movement
Movements can be associated with words, building a lexicon of movements that can then be combined, or substituted for language. Similarly words can be assigned to body parts, directions of movement or attention, locations in space, shapes, or dynamic qualities. In an improvised performance repetition is required for both the performer and the audience to learn the associations being made and how to use and read these movements as language. These techniques allow language to resemble the discrete elements of language and to substitute for words. A lexicon is constructed. Frequently the elements of such a lexicon are much clearer than the spoken word in their emotional expressiveness and betray other dimensions of the idea being signified. Working with movement in this way I have found to be very useful.

Something I have never tried is experimenting with movement grammar. This would presuppose a firmly established lexicon and clearly established rules for sequencing these elements along with grammatical markers of some kind to indicate the relationship between elements in a movement sentence. I suspect it would prove impossibly difficult.

Movement-like Language
Using dance and language together is often like patting your head while rubbing your stomach. Both consume finite mental resources. It is a situation that demands that we abdicate some measure of control to our finely honed but largely subconscious skills. (Our cyborg culture has not yet developed to the point where we can simply install a new memory chip or upgraded processor card). We are accustomed to relinquishing control when improvising with movement. We usually focus on one thing at a time letting everything else take care of itself.
We may feel reluctant to loosen this control with language. It always seems so important, the meaning of what we are saying having such significance that every word must be considered for its contribution. But this is not workable. It produces clunky, laboured text accompanied by disconnected movement.
The way for most of us to get good at language is to work at it often, in a safe, fun environment. Learn to let go of the necessity of making sense or telling the truth. Don't be concerned with how stupid you may sound. Forget about "meaning" for a while. Just get accustomed to verbalising. This will free you to work with language as you would movement.
Play with its structure, randomise it, juice it and blend it. Play with volume, speed, pitch, intonation, rhythm, rhyming, alliteration, and slips of the tongue.
There are many different ways of talking from pedestrian, lyrical, poetic, melodramatic, in character to abstract. Experiment with ways in which text can be transformed through repetition, shifts in person, tense, addressee, and sequence. Always prising yourself away from becoming too attached to any content that arises.

What happens when there is no grammar, just lexicon?
Pay attention to the spaces between words. Don't be in a hurry to move on. Feel the pleasure of where you are. Allow yourself to experience the reverberations and associations and images and sensations. Performing improvisationally is a constant process of moving in and out. The pathways back into movement will become more available and apparent to you.

Enriching Language
As improvisers we do not have the luxury of considering every word that we utter in the way that an author can. Revision is not possible. Mistakes are indelible. The way in which we habitually speak can be a fine vehicle for communication in performance, but just as with our dance it is useful to develop a broad range of options. The richness and complexity of written text is a challenge to us as improvisers in the same way that choreographed work can be a challenge to our dance. The language we produce will be different to written work, but there is no reason why it should not be any less rich and engaging.

A few ideas:


vol 6 ed 1 - ed 2 - ed 3&4 - 2003
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